Customers have traditionally led the charge in demanding connected, consumer-centric interactions from companies. But customers aren’t the only ones with heightened expectations. Now it’s the employee’s turn — and they expect the same mobile-first, connected, and personalized experiences from their workplace that they’re accustomed to in their personal lives as consumers. According to the “State of the Connected Customer” research, 71% of employees want the company they work for to provide them with the same level of technology as they use in their personal lives.

What’s more, delivering better tech and more connected experiences isn’t just a nice-to-have for employees. It’s an imperative to help them do their jobs — the ones that serve those heightened expectations of your customers. That means, if you want to serve up connected experiences to your customers, you have to start with your employees. If not, you could be contributing to the departure of existing employees or prospective candidates to companies that are more accommodating to the employee experience.

Employee Tech Gains Momentum as a Top Priority
Top companies are already listening and tasking their IT teams with constructing more connected internal processes. Already, 78% of IT leaders say that projects related to digital employee experience are a higher priority than they were just two years ago. A majority of teams (70%) deem employee satisfaction scores to be a very important KPI.

Building Extraordinary Employee Experiences
Consumers now spend an unprecedented five hours per day on their phones (up 20% from just two years ago) — and just because they enter the workplace doesn’t mean those mobile moments end. In our mobile-first world, it’s extremely rare to find employees who don’t own a smartphone or use it regularly on the job. That’s why being able to conduct business via mobile has moved from “optional” to “critical.” High-performing IT teams are 4.4x more likely than underperformers to say improving the employee experience is a critical priority.

Beyond mobile, technologies that empower employees to collaborate in real time can have tremendous impact. While we don’t see email going away as an employee communication tool, forward-looking companies are increasingly tapping into tech that boosts productivity with collaborative capabilities, such as Quip. 

To meet these growing expectations and more, IT organizations are turning to citizen development (business users creating apps using IT-sanctioned development environments) as a of accelerating development and improving productivity. Seventy-four percent of IT leaders are planning to increasingly shift some of their app-building responsibilities to business users over the next 12–18 months. That’s why it’s more important than ever that businesses invest in low-code platforms that make it easier to integrate data and offload app development to citizen developers to build fully functional apps with minimal involvement.

IT has the power to build extraordinary experiences for employees. By looking beyond satisfaction on their own teams and investing in low-code platforms, they can more quickly deliver better digital experiences for employees across the business.

Curious what else is on the horizon for IT? Check out Salesforce’s second annual “State of IT” report for a more comprehensive look at the challenges and trends facing IT today.